Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) is a Linux Foundation project aimed to offer libraries and drivers for past packet processing for any processor. DPDK libraries can be used to implement tcpdump—like packet capture algorithms, and send and receive packets fast and efficiently with usually less than 80 CPU cycles.

True to its name, DPDK limits its focus to the data plane, and does not aim to provide a stack consisting of network functions. Thus, network middlebox actions such as security and firewalls as well as the layer 3 forwarding are not offered by DPDK by design. In this recipe, we will configure DPDK for a fast and efficient packet processing.

DPDK is developed in C language though Python applications have been built on top of it. In this recipe, we will install DPDK and look into a simple Python application built with DPDK.